Over the phone the girl sounds younger than her nine years, and oh so cute when she shyly asks Kate if she's okay. Kate grins, and assures her she is. When Alexis passes the phone over to her father, Rick apologises for bothering her. "She really wanted to check on you," he tells Kate.

"Sure. Blame the nine year old." They hang up again after Castle promises to email the names of the rehab places he found. Kate falls into a restless sleep- torn between the comfort she feels at being part of Rick's life, Alexis' life, and the tumult she finds in her relationship with her father.


The day dawns bright and clear, and the sun shines in through Kate's windows. It's a stark contrast to the tight ball of dread currently knotted in Kate's gut. She prolongs the moment before getting out of bed, steeling herself for the day ahead and the conversations she's going to have to have. She pulls her robe tightly around herself and makes her way into the kitchen. At least she can start the day with coffee. Her cupboards aren't too badly stocked either- she's been shamed into buying a few boxes of breakfast cereal for fear of Rick calling her out on her bad habits again, so at least she and her father won't be relegated to eating last night's leftover Chinese for breakfast.

Jim is already up, and he's put the coffee on. Small mercies, she thinks, as she pours herself a cup before addressing him. "How's your head."

He winces. "Sorry doesn't really cut it anymore, does it?"

She shakes her head and sips the coffee, wordlessly taking bowls from the cupboard and setting cereal and milk down next to them. Kate pours them both a bowl and pushes one towards her father.

He raises his eyebrows and accepts it. "My head, huh? It's felt better, and it's felt worse."

"Uh huh." Kate's tight lipped.

"Tell me, Kate, are you still investigating?"

"I'm kind of holding out, for the moment. Not much I can do at this point while I'm still a uniform." She shakes her head. "Why?"

"I keep saying I'm going to clean up. And it never lasts. But I'm done, Kate. I can't live like this anymore. Can you?"

"I don't know what you mean."

"You still got all that stuff, Kate? The file?"

She nods.

"Can you get rid of it? Stop looking for answers?"

"Why would you ask me that?" There's a tiny part of Kate that knows. They're both addicted. His addiction is easier to handle, in some ways. Tip the evidence down the sink. Short of quitting her job, Kate's always going to be somewhere in the orbit of homicide, just a step away from solving the case.

"I've seen you, you know." Jim's eating his cereal, looking at his bowl and spoon like his life depends on it. "I know I'm not the only one. But you have to let it go, too. Stop looking, Katie. It'll kill you too. You can't bring her back."

"God! Dad." She raises her voice without even noticing. "I know that! I know, okay?"

"Do you, Katie?" He regards her for the first time. "I want to help you-"

"You?" She practically spits it at him. "How can you help me? Really. How can you help me?"

Jim shakes his head sadly. "I can't. Not like this. I have to try something new, I just don't know what."

"A.A. Can you try A.A. again?"

"I don't think that's enough. Too much God."

Kate's staring into her coffee. They've gone around in circles like this for years. She wants to believe that he's ready to change. She does believe it, a little bit, every time. And every time her heart breaks just a little more. "We have the names of a few rehab places-"

"We?"

Kate blushes, ignores the point he was making. "Yeah. Well. I was talking to Rick, and his publisher knows someone, had somewhere to recommend." She bites her lip. "I don't know how it works, Dad. Maybe your health insurance covers something?"

"Don't worry about that. Just- give me the numbers. I'll call them, find out what I have to do." He looks at her. "You working today?"

"Tonight. I'm on nights for a week, starting tonight."

"Tell you what. I'm going to go home. Get changed. I'm going to make a few calls, and meet you back here in a few hours, okay?"

As he shuffles out, she stands at her doorway, watching him make his way down the hall. When he reaches the staircase, she calls out to him. "Dad?" He turns back to her. "I haven't looked at the file properly since January." She sees the surprise on his face and shuts her door before he can verbalise a response.


Jim is as good as his word, and he comes back a few hours later. While he was gone she had taken the box from under the bed, spread all the papers out across the covers. Maybe he's right. Kate doesn't know. She hasn't so much as taken this box out from under her bed since the night Alexis stayed, and even then, she hadn't really spent time looking through it. And maybe she shouldn't now. Maybe the past should stay buried. The thing is, she's sure they're missing something. Surely there are some papers that were missed at her mother's office? The autopsy report seems so clear cut, but maybe there's something there. She stares at the papers until her Dad knocks on the door. She hastily stuffs everything back into the box guiltily, and goes to the door.

She misses this man. Right now her father looks well dressed and in control. Nothing like the man who dragged himself out of here a few hours ago. She wonders what caused the change- a shower, a fresh change of clothes and some resolve? Or has he found himself some dutch courage? Jim catches her watching him. "No more, Katie," he tells her, and she looks away, chastened. Okay then. He's clean. Or as clean as he can be, since surely yesterday's train wreck of a day is yet to leave his system.

"Can I stay here?" He asks here. "Just this week?" It can't be easy for him to ask that, and Kate nods. This time? Maybe.

"Of course." She wonders what his plan is.

Jim clears his throat. "I- um- I called a couple of those places." Well. She didn't think he'd really call, not really. He looks older than his years, and for the millionth time she wonders what they ever did to deserve this horror that has rained down on their lives. Her mother used to tell them the universe would only give someone a burden they could carry, and she'd grown up believing that, but now? She can't carry this. "I'm going in on Wednesday," he tells her. "Maybe I can stay here, until then, and then you can drive me in?"

"Okay." She nods, slowly. "Okay." Kate tries to work out the logistics in her head. "Do you need me to call into work?"

"What? No, oh, no, Kate. I don't want to disrupt your life. I just- I can't make it to Wednesday if I stay at my own place-"

It's Friday now. Five more days. Okay. Kate takes a deep breath. She can do this. They can do this. She's on nights from tonight, she'll stay here with her Dad during the day. "Okay. But Dad- promise me we're going there on Wednesday. Promise me."


On Wednesday, Kate's head is pounding. She's gotten off the night shift, and she's exhausted. Her last night shift for a few weeks, and all she wants to do is sleep, but she needs to drive her Dad upstate. Rick had offered to take them, but she'd shaken her head. "I have to do this," she'd told him, the one time she'd seen him during the week. She'd sort of tried avoiding him, but even though she wouldn't let him come over and meet her Dad, she'd been helpless to let too many hours go between phone calls and texts. He'd met her on Monday morning at seven in the morning when she got off shift, Alexis in tow, and they'd had a coffee before she went back home to check on her Dad. Amazing man, she'd thought. Dragging himself and his daughter out of bed to snatch a half hour with her before Alexis went to school and Kate went home to sleep.

But last night's patrol, combined with a sleepless night- ugh. Kate swallows down some Tylenol, and shakes her father awake. Her one bedroom is way too small to have an extra person sleeping on the couch for close to a week. Silently the two of them ride the subway over to her Dad's apartment, and he hands her the keys to his car. "Use it as much as you like," he tells her, but she knows she won't. Spring is here, and once the cold really says its goodbye for the year she'll pull her bike out of storage and zip around the city on that. She smirks, wondering what Castle will say when he finds out she has a motorcycle. She doubts he'll be able to handle the sight of her in tight black leather, and it makes her grin as she imagines messing with him, just a little.

The drive upstate is an easy run, and they find the place easily. Kate parks the car, and moves to open her door. "Stay here," Jim tells her. "No need to walk me in." He regards her with sad eyes, and reaches into the backseat to grab his bag, hoisting it over his shoulder before opening the passenger door.

"Good luck." Kate bites her lip. It's a stupid thing to say, but she can't think of thing else, can't find any other words to force past her lips.

Her Dad unbuckles the watch she gave him when she was eighteen. Her Mom had helped her pick it out. "Take it."

He holds it out to her, and she shakes her head, makes a move as though to push it away. "No, Dad, I can't- I gave that to you. It's yours."

"No. Take it. My daughter gave it to me. She can give it back to me when I've earned it." He pushes the watch into her hands, and she closes her fist over it wordlessly, as the tears roll down her cheeks. "I'm no father to you anymore, Katie. Take it, and give it back to me when I'm your father again." She looks down and unclasps the thin band of the watch she's currently wearing, then works the buckle into the last hole of the heavy band. It catches, and by the time she's done, her father has stepped out of the car and shut the door. She looks back up, only to see her father's retreating back walking away.

Kate watches her father for a moment longer, until he reaches the doors and opens them, entering the building without a backwards glance. Then she lowers her head to the steering wheel and cries.


Dinner again at the loft, and Kate is distracted, barely keeping up with Alexis' chatter. She just wants- quiet. She's walked back to her own place, from her Dad's instead of taking the subway when she'd taken his car back to his building. Unable to sleep, she'd gone back to the precinct to take advantage of the gym there. She'd beaten the heck out of the punching bag, then finally gone back to her own apartment and stared into space until it was time to meet Rick. She's been looking forward to getting over here for the whole of the week her Dad stayed, holding out for Wednesday, but now it's finally here and she just feels empty. She wants to go- be alone- run a bath- read a book. Anywhere but here. She feels bad, tries to make an effort for Alexis, but she feels like she's drowning, and she looks desperately at Rick.

"Sweetheart," he tells Alexis. "Kate's not feeling too well. How about we keep your stories at indoor voice level?"

"Are you okay?" Alexis turns to Kate, all sweet concern in her blue eyes, and Kate feels like a bitch. She's miserable and she's taking her mood out on a kid. She tells herself to keep it together, and she nods at Alexis.

"I'm okay, thanks, Alexis. Just a headache." The headache part isn't a lie.

Rick guides Kate into his bedroom after dinner, and as they pass the laden bookshelves in his office Kate is thrown again by who she's with. Her Mom really would love this. She needs to keep her head. She's lost her Mom, and as awful as today feels, she knows that this is her chance to get her Dad back.

"How was your day? Castle, I haven't even asked you what you've been doing!"

He smiles. "A bit hard, at dinner- Alexis didn't really let us get a word in."

"Still."

"I wrote- sent off the last of my edits on Storm to my publishers. They'll send me back some corrections, but it means I'm done with that- and I can really start on the Nikki Heat-"

"Heat? Are you kidding me?"

"Oh- I didn't tell you her last name before, did I?" Castle's eyes are dancing, and she thinks she's going to kill him. Well. There goes the momentary fascination with his celebrity. She's feeling like shit and he's laughing at her.

"No. You didn't. God! Why do you have to write about me?" He's obviously a self-entitled jackass with no respect for her or her job.

"Well- based on you- it won't be about you until you let me visit you at work and spend a few days on a case with you-"

"No. No. Are you kidding? Besides- everyone knows about you now. My boss has known who I'm dating for a few months? That's- it's not good, Castle."

"Kate-" he motions her toward the bed. "Stop thinking so much. Please." She sighs. She's getting worked up about this, and it's not fair to Rick. It's not his fault- well, okay, it is- but it's not entirely his fault that he's so into this.

Shit. She shakes her head. "No. No. Absolutely not. Never going to happen, Castle. What about a CIA agent?"

"What?"

"Wouldn't it be better to write about a CIA Agent? Rather than an NYPD cop, I mean? Expand your Clara Strike character. Or what- let me guess- she's based on a real CIA Agent that you pissed off too?"

His mouth falls open.

Shit. "Shit. I'm right. I'm right, aren't I?"

He shrugs. "Sort of, but it was different- ugh-"

Kate spins around, stalks into the bathroom and shuts the door behind her. The moment the door shuts behind her she's mortified. She should have gone home when she had the chance. She's horrible company, and now she's deliberately picking a fight with Rick, like she's willing him to kick her out, being an asshole on purpose. She leans against the wall beside the door and closes her eyes as her head hits the cool tiles, hot tears prickling at her eyelids.

He knocks on the door, and she reaches out and opens it without stepping away from the wall. He steps into her, right into her space, her legs fitting into the space between his, and his arms around her. Kate can't move, and she doesn't want to. "Fuck," she whispers. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I don't know- I didn't mean-" She stops, and he draws back and looks at her, wipes away the tear that is rolling down her cheek. "I don't cry," she tells him, and it's a plea. "This isn't me."

"Hey…" He's shushing in her ear, and stroking her hair, and she finds herself rolling her eyes at herself. Seriously. This could be the best thing to ever happen to her, and she's messing it up, sabotaging herself before it can begin. "Kate? You took your Dad to rehab today. It's okay. It's going to be okay."

Kate looks at Rick. "Can we start the night again?"

He nods, eagerly. "Kate. Come to bed. Sleep." He presses a kiss to her cheek, and she relaxes against him.

"Or…" She nods in the direction of his tub. She's been dying to get into it, it looks one hundred times more comfortable than her own. "Bubble bath?" She bites her lip, and he laughs.

"Bubble bath." He takes her hand and steps over to the tub, and turns on the taps.


A/N: Thanks for the many many reviews last chapter- turns out all I had to do was indulge in a little shameless begging ;) It's appreciated!